Just up is a new website aimed at defeating Sen. Patty Murray. The author of the site is Chris Widener, an Issaquah businessman, author, and motivational speaker who is challenging the popular Democrat in the fall election. The site provides a good primer on where the attack on Murray will be coming from. It attacks the senator's record on health care, the national debt, immigration, and local issues such as Boeing contracts. One of the architects behind the site is Cyrus Krohn, the former eCampaign director of the RNC, who worked for Slate and Yahoo and is now back at Microsoft launching local websites.
A Washington native, Chris Widener is running as a Republican along pro-growth, strong-defense, social-conservative lines. He's the founder of Positively Republican, a very large social media site with 160,000 people. He's a former minister and believes in what he calls "servant leadership." One of his motivational books on leadership and personal development has the intriguing title, The Angel Inside: Michelangelo'ês Secrets to Following Your Passion and Finding the Work You Love. Widener says he's also launching an aggressive online ad campaign against Murray, starting today. This might be the first test of how well the charged-up populism of the Republicans will go over in this state against a deeply entrenched member of the DC political establishment.
